If you haven’t been living under a rock this past week, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of the new The Sims 4 pack called Island Living. It’s an island paradise you can escape into right on your computer screen.

I’ve played a bit of it and I must say, it’s fun. The mermaids are super fun to play with, however humans are just as fun! The island culture is nice and you can do quite a few things around the three neighborhood areas. Like for example, you can cook feasts, build sandcastles, beachcomb, summon and play with dolphins (if you’re a mermaid), snorkel, fish, and live out your travel blogger dreams of going to the beach and relaxing there.

As with the Strangerville pack, however, it does have its downsides.
Here are some of the Island Living pack’s pros and cons:

Pros:

New Island life-inspired CAS items with a bunch of really cool, curly hairstyles!

There’s a new trend in the Sims community thanks to Tumblr user Smart Milk. They were inspired by isometric pixel art of rooms by JMW327. The trend, called “TS4 Dollhouses” is reminiscent of miniature dollhouse kits that are quite popular among crafters and miniature hobbyists.

Recently, my YouTube and Tumblr feeds have been full of other people’s creations. They are quite impressive. Here’s a video made by Elliandra, a Sims YouTuber:

Naturally, I wanted to participate. Here’s my take on TS4 Dollhouse trend:

Beannie’s TS4 Dollhouse

I went for a pink, girly loft kind of house. Instead of doing one room, like most people do, I decided to go for a whole house. I kept it simple and tried not to put too much decorations or clutter inside the house. I think I did a pretty good job!

The Sims community is full of talented and creative people. It’s so much fun watching videos and looking at pictures of their creations. It’s amazing how a video game franchise could bring so much joy to people.

In the later part of November 2018, Apple got rid of the Tumblr app from their store because of the existence of child porn material. This action immediately had a big impact on the platform, which quickly declared that it will prohibit all NSFW content by December 17, 2018.

This sudden decision was quite a shock for Tumblr’s users, all of whom had become familiar with the freedom of posting sexually explicit content on the platform.

Loads of several fandoms and communities are suffering from the effects of this content restriction. For one, Tumblr’s algorithm is flagging non-NSFW posts such as innocent art. Then there are some individuals saying that Tumblr is also removing the feature of custom themes, which is a huge deal for almost all of the Tumblr members who make use of the platform as a way to express their creativity, be it in their content or in the very theme/layout of their blogs.

Artists who used to post their art on Tumblr are now switching to other platforms. I’ve personally talked to a couple of artists who wanted to move their original character art to Toyhouse because of Tumblr’s apparent self-destruction.

Although sad, it’s what Tumblr thinks is the right thing to do and all we can do right now is either to bear with it and continue using the platform or to move on to other services.

The Sims Mobile game has been released worldwide! I downloaded the game and started playing right away.
Here are my thoughts about it.

The Sims Mobile

It’s very charming. It kind of reminds me of The Sims Bustin’ Out and The Sims 2 for the PS2. You get to make a fairly customizable first Sim and then add a second one shortly after.

Jobs and housing are chosen for you. It can get either annoying for some players, or really convenient for others.

There’s an energy system where you spend energy to do actions. There’s no action queue like in the PC versions, and you can’t do different things at the same time. Once you hit your energy limit, you’ll have to wait for a few minutes for it to replenish. There are some things you could do to regain bits of energy, like, sleeping, taking a shower, or using the toilet.

The Sims Mobile Screenshot

Moods don’t exist in this game. That means you don’t have to worry about filling up your Sims’ motives. No more social or bladder bars!

They used music similar to those of the old PC versions of the games so there’s no doubt you’d feel right at home if you’re an old The Sims fan.

For the most part, I think it’s quite similar to The Sims Freeplay. It’s all just a glorified waiting game with cute graphics to distract you. There’s always the option to buy in-app purchases to speed things up, but why would you buy a virtual double bed for 700PHP?

Should you get this game? If you’re a The Sims fan, you’d enjoy this.
Is it something you can play for months? No, I don’t think so. It gets pretty boring after a while.

If you’re someone who enjoys idle/waiting games, then this might be a good one for you.

Mastodon is the new social networking site that rocked the Internet for these past half month. But what’s different about Mastodon is that Mastodon is open-source. It means that the code is available for everyone to use, and people can make their own Mastodon servers as alternative platforms, which are called “instances.”

Like Twitter, you can post statuses/messages and pictures in Mastodon. But instead of 140, Mastodon’s character limit is 500. And a feature that I love most, the “CW” or Content Warning, for spoilers, NSFWs and stuff.

Another great thing I found interesting about Mastodon is that you can interact with people even when they’re from different servers. There’s a “Local timeline” where you can find the toots (or posts) of people in the same server as you, and a “Federated timeline” where you can see toots from across all of the Mastodon instances.

If you’re tired of spammers, troll, and bullshit from Twitter, you might wanna try being on Mastodon.